Celebrating Kick-ass Pam Grier as She Turns 68
Grier rose above her blaxploitation roots to become a trailblazing performer and cultural icon
Pam Grier famously booked her first acting job with producer Roger Corman while a struggling film student at UCLA in the 1960s, the Los Angeles Times reported:
When I talked to him I said, ‘Roger, I can’t be fired. I don’t know what to do. You have to talk to my mom to make sure you going to take care of me and don’t fire me. I can’t just go off into this and think I am going to be a movie star.’
We all know she wildly exceeded her own expectations.
Grier — who turns 68 on Friday — has built an acting career across film genres, breaking barriers along the way as one of the first female action stars and remaking herself as a symbol of empowerment for women of color in the industry.
Grier rose from small parts in women-in-prison movies to groundbreaking parts in 1970s blaxploitation films to leading turns in major Hollywood movies and TV series.
Director Quentin Tarantino built his film Jackie Brown around her in 1997 in what may be her most iconic role, which looks back at her genre-film beginnings while giving Grier her most complex and subtle character so far. And it introduced her to a new generation of filmgoers, cementing her place in movie history.
“Well, it’s Quentin Tarantino, and he made a remarkable, extraordinary film that has had legs — people are still seeing it today or revisiting it for the fifth or sixth time and seeing something different each time and are thoroughly enjoying it,” Grier told GQ magazine on the occasion of the film’s 15th anniversary in 2011. “The amount of fan mail I get from Greece and the Netherlands and China, and people stop me in the street and go, ‘Jackie Brown!’”
Let’s take a look back at Grier’s career as we raise a glass to her continued kickassery!
Coffy (1973)
Grier immediately commanded the screen in her first lead role, playing a vengeful heroine in one of the 1970s-era blaxploitation actioners. It was unusual for such a film — characterized by violence, stereotypes, crime and lurid sex — to feature a female lead.
Critic Roger Ebert observed so at the time and noted Grier’s special appeal:
She’s beautiful, as I’ve already mentioned, but she also has a kind of physical life to her that is sometimes missing in beautiful actresses. She doesn’t seem to be posing or doing the fashion-model bit; she gets into an action role and does it right.
Grier appeared in several subsequent blaxploitation films throughout the ‘70s.
Foxy Brown (1974)
Sheba Baby (1975)
Friday Foster (1975)
“It’s open season on that super sister, and every stud and his brother is out to put her down or shake her up. But she don’t dig their game.” — trailer for Friday Foster
Grier appeared alongside such prominent African-American actors as Yaphet Kotto, Godfrey Cambridge, Thalmus Rasulala, Eartha Kitt, Ted Lange and Carl Weathers in Friday Foster.
Grier has described herself as “very proud” of her work in her blaxploitation films. “It was the time of the woman’s movement, and in order to sell women’s equality — not domination, we’re not trying to castrate anyone or take away a man’s job — just be recognized as equal,” she told GQ.
Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981)
Grier played a prostitute in director Daniel Petrie’s crime action movie and shared the screen with Paul Newman, Ken Wahl, Rachel Ticotin and Ed Asner.
She brought the same level of focus to this role as any other (she was trained in Konstantin Stanislavski’s Method acting regimen) and discussed how she prepared for the audition in a talk at Lincoln Center in 2013.
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
Grier had a brief role as the Dust Witch in director Jack Clayton’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s supernatural novel. She plays “a demonic temptress (she is first seen fondling a pet spider),” according to New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin.
Above the Law (1988)
Grier co-starred in director Andrew Davis’ action thriller as Chicago Det. Delores “Jacks” Jackson, partner to star Steven Seagal’s Sgt. Nico Toscani. It was Seagal’s first film and the one that made him a top action star of the 1980s and ‘90s.
Grier has said she enjoyed her role because it allowed her to showcase different aspects of her character.
Shortly after completing the film, Grier was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She spent the next several years overcoming the illness, returning to acting in the 1990s.
Escape From L.A. (1996)
Director John Carpenter’s sequel to his 1981 Escape From New York cast Grier as gang leader Hershe Las Palmas — formerly Carjack Malone in the first movie (played by actor Emmanuel Brown).
It wasn’t much of a part, but it marked the beginning of Grier’s comeback as an action star in the 1990s, which culminated in her starring role in Jackie Brown.
Jackie Brown (1997)
Tarantino adapted Elmore Leonard’s 1995 novel Rum Punch, famously changing the lead character’s name and ethnicity to accommodate Grier and retitling it Jackie Brown.
Ebert praised the film effusively and said about its star: “Pam Grier, the goddess of 1970s tough-girl pictures, here finds just the right note for Jackie Brown; she’s tired and desperate.”
Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman went further:
“Pam Grier looks marvelous, with her diamond eyes and sexy half sneer, and though the middle-aged bulkiness of her body gives you a bit of a start, she is, as always, a commanding actress; she blends street smarts and melancholy the way she used to blend street smarts and Amazonian hauteur.”
Grier talked about making Jackie Brown at Lincoln Center in 2013:
Television
Miami Vice (1985-’89)
Grier made the transition to television in a notable guest role in the eighth episode of filmmaker Michael Mann’s hit NBC series, playing Valerie Gordon, a New York police detective who shows up to find her sister.
Grier made enough of an impression as a cop and love interest for Vice star Philip Michael Thomas’ Tubbs that she returned for two more guest shots.
The L Word (2004-’09)
Grier played Kit Porter, one of the few straight characters, on Showtime’s groundbreaking lesbian drama, which ran for six seasons. Kit is the half-sister of star Jennifer Beals’ Bette Porter.
Grier was proud of her work on the series. “I think that the The L Word and the actors that have come aboard have really helped to open the eyes and hearts and minds of many, many people who just didn’t have an understanding of the gay/transgender/bisexual world,” she told NPR in 2007.
Smallville (2010)
Grier played the villainous Amanda Waller—i.e., the White Queen of the nefarious underground government agency Checkmate—in the ninth season of The CW’s teen Superman series. (Viola Davis played the same character, a staple of the DC Comics universe, in last year’s Suicide Squad movie.)
Grier now lives on a ranch in Colorado, but continues to work, the Los Angeles Times reported:
She recently finished an indie film, Rose, with Cybill Shepherd and James Brolin and a comedy, Grandmother’s Murder Club, with the late Florence Henderson.
She’s also written screenplays she wants to direct, noting, “I just want the opportunity to tell a story about the African-American community and the women’s movement — to not preach and pontificate, but at least allow the audience to understand what it was like to live through and survive.”
Grier is pleased with how things turned out after her first encounter with the movie business in the person of Roger Corman.
“I’m still getting offers, 40 years later,” she told GQ. “Let’s see who has a 40-year career. Me and Betty White. The legacy is not just me; it’s all of us and our love for film, whether it’s Bertolucci or Fellini or Roger Corman, or whomever we love, we become those certain things. It’s very complex. … It’s lovely.”
See Pam Grier in her tour de force role as Jackie Brown today! Click the button below to stream Jackie Brown with a FREE Tribeca Shortlist trial.
